1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus for stacking shaped materials on a pallet, in which elongated shaped metals, or plastic pipes or tubes, or the like, hereinafter generically referred to as "shapes", which are, for example, cut into individual elongated shapes after having been extruded from an extruding press or rolled by a rolling machine, are stacked or piled one by one on a pallet with the insertion of spacers between the respective adjacent shapes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Shapes of the type as mentioned above are usually transported onto a standard length table, where they are cut into individual shapes, after having been extruded from an extruding press or rolled by a rolling machine. These shapes are then fed one by one in a direction perpendicular to the previous longitudinal feeding direction thereof to the standard length table and arranged side by side in line on an inspection table. In order to transport these shapes to a certain storage place by using suitable carts, these shapes are conventionally stacked or piled one by one, with the insertion of spacers between respective adjacent layers, onto a pallet of frame structure which is adapted to be mounted on the cart. The loading operations of spacers onto a pallet in the prior art requires a lot of labor, since several operators have to cooperate to load these shapes one by one with manual operations. In addition, in the recent years, the size of shapes becomes larger and larger so that the loading requires more severe and dangerous operations. Therefore, any suitable machines for loading or stacking these shapes have been desired and various types of such machines have been proposed.
A chain conveyor type loading machine is known, in which shapes supplied from a standard length table in a direction perpendicular to the longitudinal or axial direction thereof are turned one by one to be in the axial direction and transferred by a roller table. Then, the shapes are conveyed by a chain conveyor under which there is a rack mounted on a car movable in a pit, so that the shapes fall down one by one into the rack and at the same time spacers are intermittently inserted between the individual shapes by a suitable spacer feeder.
An overhead type loading machine is also known, in which a roller table and a pallet having wheel trucks are arranged in parallel under a gate-shaped frame, and a lift having an electric magnet at the lower end thereof is suspended from the frame so as to magnetically hold the shapes and move the shapes repeatedly between the roller table and the pallet for loading the shapes onto the pallet. In this case, spacers are also intermittently inserted between the individual shapes by a spacer feeder.
However, these conventional loading machines have some disadvantages. For instance, in the chain conveyor type loading machine, it is difficult to secure enough space for loading due to its structure, means for moving the rack to or from the loading position are complicated, and it is also difficult to smoothly insert the spacers between the individual shapes. On the other hand, in the overhead type loading machine, since the lift moves over the operator's heads, the operations are dangerous and not suited for large and long sized shapes. In addition, the cycle of operation is relatively long, and the insertion of spacers is also difficult.
Some other types of loading machines are also known in the prior art. However, they are types of manual or incomplete automatic operations including manual inserting operation of spacers, which operate in the same manner as the two above mentioned known machines.